중앙데일리

Korea shutting down ‘comfort women’ fund

한국, 위안부재단 해산 추진

Nov 24,2018

Korea JoongAng DailyThursday, November 22, 2018

A weekly rally is held in front of the former Japanese Embassy in central Seoul Wednesday protesting the so-called comfort women agreement of 2015, which created a Tokyo-funded foundation Korea says it will shut down. [NEWS1]

Seoul announced Wednesday it would shut down a Japanese-funded foundation meant to support women forced to work as sex slaves in Japan’s military brothels during World War II, the latest step to effectively void a 2015 bilateral agreement that was supposed to solve the enduring comfort women issue.

South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said in a press release that it would undergo legal procedures to scrap the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, which was launched in July 2016 to manage a multimillion dollar fund from the Japanese government.

The fund was based on an agreement signed by both countries on Dec. 28, 2015, between Japan’s current Shinzo Abe administration and South Korea’s former right-leaning Park Geun-hye administration.

2015년 12월28일 일본 신조 아베 정부와 한국 박근혜 정부가 서명한 합의에 근거해 일본 정부가 기금을 내놓았다.

Aimed at resolving the issue of Japan’s recruitment of Korean sex slaves in the early 20th century, which has poisoned bilateral relations for decades, the deal included an apology from Tokyo and a 1 billion yen fund for the victims, which amounted to about $8.8 million at the time. Both countries said the agreement was “final and irreversible.”

But some survivors, euphemistically called “comfort women,” and local progressive civic groups supporting them immediately rejected the deal, saying Japan failed to take real responsibility for its actions and pay legal damages to the victims.